Beyond Life's Void

Beyond Life’s Void Book Club – Formation

I suffer from insomnia. I am most awake between 1:30am and 4:30am and it took a series of sleepless nights, staring at the ceiling to realize that my time, in such moments, could be utilized in a much better way. I would mostly find myself watching ‘series’. This was a DC++ triggered hobby maintained post my university studies.

Surely I could find a better way to fill in the empty spaces?

I recalled a time when reading was my love. I used to read everywhere. I used to love books. Heck, I was even a librarian in high school. And yet, at this particular point in my life, I had probably read a handful of books in the last 2 years. I am sure that many can attest to the fact that once one specializes in a certain field, they tend to find themselves only readings books pertaining to that field. I was not broadening my mind to the many genres out there and I always came up with the excuse that I should be focusing on my studies and preparing for tests or exams. Reading outside of my field felt like a non-value adding exercise.

Back to staring at the ceiling in the wee hours of the morning-I was trying to figure out how best I could get back to my love. Doing it by myself would be an arduous task and I could only imagine how many people were in a similar situation. (I don’t know where I fall on the spectrum of feminism but that part of me smiled at the prospect of sharing this opportunity with other women-done by women for women). That’s when the idea to start the book club came about. Immediately I started drafting the vision for this club and inviting my friends. I was deliberate in choosing the first members of the club-these had to be women who already had an interest in reading and in Africa. Some of them are already avid readers and some are like me, wanting to read but somehow not having the time or rather not prioritizing it enough. The aim was to make this club sustainable.

At any point in time, we would not always be in the same city but our passion for reading would enable us to simply make it work.

Hence, the idea (thanks to Tomtom) to call it ‘The Sisterhood of the Travelling Book Club-SOTTBC’.

A few things have changed since then. We have renamed ourselves the ‘BLV Book Club’. Beyond Life’s Void. SOTTBC was taken J. We will be sharing our experiences in the book club, the books we read and above all, the conversations sparked by these books. We aim to share our passion for books in the hopes of encouraging other women to follow suit. We are mainly based in Durban (with a few members currently based in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Lagos). We are happy to have more members join us on our reading journey. If you are interested- email us on blvbookclub@gmail.com.